nths after Bingo hit the market, Lowe was approached by a priest from Wilkes-Barre,

Several mo Pennsylvania. The Father had a problem in his parish. A fast thinking parishoner had come up with the idea of using Bingo as a way to get the church out of its financial troubles. The priest had put the scheme into operation after having bought several sets of Lowe’s $2.00 Bingo game. However, problems developed immediately when it was found that each game produced half a dozen or more winners. Lowe could immediately see the tremendous fund raising possibilities of Bingo, but at the same time, he realized that to make the game workable on this large of a scale, a great many more combinations of numbers would have to be developed for the cards. To accomplish this, Lowe sought the services of an elderly professor of mathematics at Columbia University, one Carl Leffler. Lowe’s request was the the professor devise 6,000 new Delhi Bazaar Satta King Bingo cards with non repeating number groups. The professor agreed to a fee that remunerated him on a per card basis. As the professor worked on, each card became increasingly difficult. Lowe was impatient, and toward the end the price per card had risen to $100. Eventually, the task was completed. The E.S. Lowe Company had its 6,000 cards – at the expense of the professor’s sanity!

The church of Wilkes-Barre was saved and after it, a Knights of Columbus Hall in Utica, New York. Word spread fast – “I used to get thousands of letters asking for help on setting up Bingo games, “said Lowe – so many that he published Bingo’s first Instructional Manual. This effort was followed by a monthly news letter called The Blotter (absorbs all Bingo news) which was distributed to 37,000 subscribers. By 1934 there were an estimated 10,000 Bingo games a week, and Ed Lowe’s firm had a thousand employees frantically trying to keep up with demand – nune entire floors of the New York office space, and 64 presses printing 24 hours a day – “… we used more newsprint than the New York Times!” According to Lowe, the largest Bingo game in history was played in New York’s Teaneck Armory – 60,000 players, with another 10,000 being turned away at the door. Ten automobiles were given away. Bingo was off to a fast start, and at the same time, had reserved itself next to baseball and apple pie – thanks to Ed Lowe and the loss of Professor Leffler’s sanity.